The fastest highway in America is now open. There's now a highway in Texas that lets drivers legally drive up to 85mph.
State Highway 130, a 40-mile stretch of road between Austin and San Antonio, has a speed limit of 85 mph. However the speedy joyride isn't free. It is a toll road that will cost $6.17 each way.
"People want to go fast," Adrian Lund, President of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety told CNBC. "Cars are built to go fast and states increasingly want to raise their speed limits. Even if it means saving just two or three minutes during a trip, people want to go faster."
The speedy road joins other roads in Texas that have limits of 80 mph and 75 mph, but this road has an even higher limit because it is privately owned. Cintra-Zachry owns the road, but the Texas Department of Transportation set the limit.
The high speed limit may cause some concern, but the road doesn't run through neighborhoods.
"There is a lot of wide open space in Texas which makes sense with these higher posted speed limits--the 85, 75 80 mph roads are all out in rural areas that can handle that kind of traffic," company spokesman Chris Lippincott told ABC. "It is important to remember that through towns like San Antonio, Austin and Dallas the speed limits are not set at 85 mph; we are not building a race track through the middle of town, we just want to make sure people can get safely and reliably where they need to go."
This high speed highway was constructed to relieve traffic on other roads between Austin and San Antonio, such as Interstate 35. The new State Highway 130 is being dubbed "Pickle Parkway," for local Democratic U.S. Rep J.J. "Jake" Pickle who passed away, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The new 41-mile highway, dubbed "Pickle Parkway" for the late local Democratic U.S. Rep J.J. "Jake" Pickle, running west toward San Antonio will probably absorb commuters avoiding the congested Interstate 35 loop around Austin.
Some have concerns over the high speed.
"Whenever we see a posted speed limit, we think we can go above it, we think we can go 5 or 10 mph above it and a lot of cases we can't, so the reality is you're talking about the flow of traffic being 90, 95, even a little bit more, and so if you're in a crash, you're just not going to survive, even if you wear a seatbelt," Jonathan Adkins, deputy executive director with the Governor's Highway Safety Association told ABC.
However others don't think it will be a big issue as there are already high speed highways in the state with few fatalities.
"We've had no safety problems with the existing 80 mph speed limits on I-10 and I-20. In fact, we have had fewer fatalities on these highways where the speed limit was increased to 80 mph," she said. "A three-year before-and-after snapshot shows that fatal crashes actually went down when speed limits were increased," Veronica Beyer, a spokeswoman for the state's Department of Transportation told the Los Angeles Times.
"We've had no safety problems with the existing 80 mph speed limits on I-10 and I-20. In fact, we have had fewer fatalities on these highways where the speed limit was increased to 80 mph," she said. "A three-year before-and-after snapshot shows that fatal crashes actually went down when speed limits were increased."
